IRS to Issue Tax Refunds Despite Partial Government Shutdown

The White House told reporters that it has directed the Internal Revenue Service to pay out refunds if the shutdown continues into the upcoming tax season.

“Tax refunds will go out,” Russell Vought, acting director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, told reporters at a briefing on Monday, according to a report by Bloomberg.

The decision by the White House reverses a long-standing shutdown policy, the Wall Street Journal reported. Previously the IRS would accept tax returns during filing season, but wait until the government was funded to pay refunds.

Vought told the newspaper that the White House is fixing what he called a problem faced by past administrations.

Goring forward, the Gem State recently launched a new W-4 form to help taxpayers better calculate how much to withhold for 2019. The form is available online, but the Idaho Tax Commission said it will also send out hard forms to more than 70,000 state employers with payroll withholding accounts.

Tax Commission Chairman Ken Roberts said in a statement Tuesday that the new form is in an effort to make it easier for taxpayers to calculate their withholdings and to encourage them to update their W-4s in light of last year’s tax reforms.